thomas mattair. >> thank you very much, john. i look forward to doing this, and i appreciate the invitation. i especially look forward to it because i, as chairman, don't have to make formal remarks. that's up to my panelists. i think this is a very well chosen topic and a very well chosen panel because we are about to have an election for the presidency. whoever becomes president will have a number of very important decisions to make, and we could evaluate -- we should evaluate how successful we've been and what shortcomings need to be corrected. and the reason the panel is well chosen is because you're going to hear different points of view on these topics. and i won't take long, but they obviously involve an examination of whether our diplomacy has advanced our objectives, whether the sanctions have advanced our objectives, if they have, are we going to be intelligent in our diplomacy? the defense and cooperation agreements we have with the gcc countries, if they've been valuable in terms of deterring or curtailing iran, and t